CLINTON ST. QUARTERLY ^ \ s the working relationship between Rockefeller enterprises Jrus and China make clear, financial capitalism and communism are not necessary enemies. U.S. officials during the Red Scare of 1919. The legal and political re quirements of the federal government, however, were no hindrance to Wall Street interests bent on capturing the Soviet investment market. Guaranty Trust, the American International Corporation, and Kuhn, Loeb and Company all were involved in illegal transfers of Soviet-held gold to this country in the early years of the Bolshevik Revolution. Leading bankers and industrialists even joined reformers such as William Borah and Lincoln Steffens in creating an American League to Aid and Cooperate with Russia in 1918. When the Soviets established an international bank four years later, its chief of foreign commerce was the vice- president of Morgan’s Guaranty Trust. Wall Street operatives hoped to finance Soviet industry and provide markets for American exports. As Sutton suggests, “ The gigantic Russian market was to be converted into a captive market and a technical colony to be exploited by a few high- powered American financiers and the corporations under their control.” In Sutton’s view bolsheviks and bankers share an international approach. “ Revolution and in te rna tiona l finance are not at all inconsistent,” he concludes, “ if the result of revolution is to establish more centralized authority.” For planned and centralized government, no matter what its ideology, can stabilize foreign markets and sources of investment. Although important Wall Street leaders conducted covert relations with the revolutionary government in Moscow, many of them publicly denounced communism and expressed fears of a bolshevik uprising in the United States. When the Soviets refused to accept the status of a “ technical colony” and asserted their hegemony in eastern Europe following World War Two, the international banking community enthusiastically supported the Cold War mili- tance of the Truman administration. Nevertheless, as the working relationship between Rockefeller’s Chase Manhattan Bank and the People’s Republic of China should make clear, financial capitalism and communism are not necessary enemies. What’s Left? A view of the nation’s history in the past century produces some perverse conclusions. Liberal reform, which has brought substantive assurances for working people and the middle class, has only succeeded with the cooperation of corporate managers and Wall Street internationalists. Corporate liberalism is opportunistic and impersonal. Its morality revolves around the stability of an ever-growing corporate order and its expansion to a worldwide economic system. To assure stability and order, it has paid some attention to the needs of new entrants to the marketplace — ethnic workers, racial minorities, and more recently, women. But now energy costs and balance-of-trade problems have jeopardized the entire corporate order. And Ronald Reagan has become the first opponent of liberal internationalism since Barry Goldwater to seriously contend for national power. Reagan’s conservatism stresses the morality of traditional family values and the spirit of en- treprenurial capitalism instead of corporate capitalism. His militant nationalism replaces the idea of an interrelated global economy with the challenge of a world simply suceptible to American whim. This is particularly appealing to Americans frustrated by the onrush of overseas events beyond the control of the United States. Despite the legacy of anticorporate conservatism from which he draws, President Reagan undoubtedly would make his peace with the corporate overseers of the economic system. But there are two disturbing possibilities to be contemplated. First, major corporate and banking leaders no longer may believe that the struggling economy can afford the social and economic services built into the corporate state. Second, serious strategic difficulties in the vital Middle East may be prodding liberal internationalists toward a more militant overseas nationalism. In that case, a Reagan presidency could incorporate the worst of both possible worlds of. the American political mainstream. For the voter of 1980, the choices are not bright. Those who look to a better future once again must select between two or three major candidates who embody the mistakes of the past. Or voters may risk the luxury of a protest vote if they are prepared to accept the worst of what’s left. David Horowitz teaches history at Portland State and is co-author o f Twentieth Century Limited: A History o f Recent America. Wall Street on John Reed . . .H e can be handled and controlled much better by other means that through the police. . . . I believe it to be wise not to offend the Bolshevik leaders unless and until it may become necessary to do so — if it should become necessary — . . . I think it better policy to attempt to use such people for our own purposes in developing our policy toward Russia . . . Can we not use him, instead of embittering him and making him an enemy? He is not well balanced, but he is . . . susceptible to discreet guidance and might be quite useful. —William Franklin Sands, executive secretary of the American International Corporation, to the Counselor for the Department of State, June 5, 1918. Reed was an American revolutionary who compiled eyewitness accounts of the Bolshevik Revolution and represented Soviet interests in the United States. 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